Actually, Flandry did not answer, Josip wouldn’t give a damn. Or maybe he would. Maybe he’d ask to see films of the action, and watch them and giggle. The wind changed again, and he blessed it for taking away part of the charnel odor.

“We paid,” Ch’kessa said. “That was not easy, but we remember the barbarians too well. Then this season a fresh demand was put before us. We, who had powder rifles, were to supply males. They would be flown to lands like Yanduvar, where folk lack firearms. There they would catch natives for the slave market. I do not understand, though I have often asked. Why does the Empire, with many machines, need slaves?”

Personal service. Flandry did not answer. For instance, the sort women supply. We use enslavement as one kind of criminal penalty. But it isn’t too significant. There isn’t that big a percentage of slaves in the Empire. The barbarians, though, would pay well for skilled hands. And transactions with them do not get into any Imperial records for some official computer to come upon at a later date.

“Continue,” he said aloud.

“The Council of the Clan Towns of Att debated long,” Ch’kessa said. “We were afraid. Still, the thing was not right for us to do. At length we decided to make excuses, to delay as much as might be, while messengers sped overland to Iscoyn. There the Imperial marine base is, as my lord well knows. The messengers would appeal to the commandant, that he intercede for us with the resident.”

Flandry caught a mutter behind him: “Nova flash! Is he saying the marines hadn’t been enforcing the decrees?”

“Yeh, sure,” growled an adjacent throat. “Forget your barroom brawls with ’em. They wouldn’t commit vileness like this. Mercenaries did it. Now dog your hatch before the Old Man hears you.”

Me? Flandry thought in stupid astonishment. Me, the Old Man?

“I suppose our messengers were caught and their story twisted from them,” Ch’kessa sighed. “At least, they never returned. A legate came and told us we must obey. We refused. Troops came. They herded us together. A hundred were chosen by lot and put on the crosses. The rest of us had to watch till all were dead. It took three days and nights. One of my daughters was among them.” He pointed. His arm was not steady. “Perhaps my lord can see her. That quite small body, eleventh on our left. It is black and swollen, and much of it has fallen off, but she used to come stumping and laughing to meet me when I returned from work. She cried for me to help her. The cries were many, yet I heard hers. Whenever I moved toward her, a shock beam stopped me. I had not thought there could be happiness in seeing her die. We were instructed to leave the bodies in place, on pain of bombing. An aircraft flies over from time to time to make sure.”

He sat down in the whispering silvery pseudograss, face on knees and tail across neck. His fingers pluck at the dirt. “After that,” he said, “we went slaving.”

Flandry stood silent for a space. He had been furious at the carnage being inflicted by the more advanced Shalmuans on the weaker ones. Swooping down on a caravan of chained prisoners, he had arrested its leader and demanded an explanation. Ch’kessa had suggested they flit to his homeland.

“Where are your villagers?” Flandry asked at length, for the houses stood empty, smokeless, silent.

“They cannot live here with those dead,” Ch’kessa replied. “They camp out, coming back only to maintain. And doubtless they fled when they saw your boat, my lord, not knowing what you would do.” He looked up. “You have seen. Are we deeply to blame? Will you return me to my gang? A sum is promised each of us for each slave we bring in. It is helpful in meeting the tax. I will not get mine if I am absent when the caravan reaches the airfield.”

“Yes.” Flandry turned. His cloak swirled behind him. “Let’s go.”

Another low voice at his back: “I never swallowed any brotherhood-of-beings crap, you know that, Sam’l, but when our own xenos are scared by a vessel of ours — !”

“Silence,” Flandry ordered.

The gig lifted with a yell and trailed a thunderbolt across half a continent and an ocean. Nobody spoke. When she tilted her nose toward jungle, Ch’kessa ventured to say, “Perhaps you will intercede for us, my lord.”

“I’ll do my best,” Flandry said.

“When the Emperor hears, let him not be angry with us of the Clan Towns. We went unwillingly. We sicken with fevers and die from the poisoned arrows of the Yanduvar folk.”

And wreck what was a rather promising culture, Flandry thought.

“If punishment must be for what we have done, let it fall on me alone,” Ch’kessa begged. “That does not matter greatly after I watched my little one die.”

“Be patient,” Flandry said. “The Emperor has many peoples who need his attention. Your turn will come.”

Inertial navigation had pinpointed the caravan, and a mere couple of hours had passed since. Flandry’s pilot soon found it, grudging down a swale where ambush was less likely than among trees. He landed the gig a kilometer off and opened the airlock.

“Farewell, my lord.” The Shalmuan knelt, coiled his tail around Flandry’s ankles, crawled out and was gone. His slim green form bounded toward his kin.

“Return to the ship,” Flandry instructed.

“Doesn’t the captain wish to pay a courtesy call on the resident?” asked the pilot sarcastically. He was not long out of the Academy. His hue remained sick.

“Get aloft, Citizen Willie,” Flandry said. “You know we’re on an information-gathering mission and in a hurry. We didn’t notify anyone except Navy that we’d been on Starport or New Indra, did we?”

The ensign sent hands dancing across the board. The gig stood on its tail with a violence that would have thrown everybody into the stern were it not for acceleration compensators. “Excuse me, sir,” he said between his teeth. “A question, if the captain pleases. Haven’t we witnessed outright illegality? I mean, those other two planets were having a bad time, but nothing like this. Because the Shalmuans have no way to get a complaint off their world, I suppose. Isn’t our duty, sir, to report what we’ve seen?”

Sweat glistened on his forehead and stained his tunic beneath the arms. Flandry caught an acrid whiff of it. Glancing about, he saw the other four men leaning close, straining to hear through the throb of power and whistle of cloven atmosphere. Should I answer? he asked himself, a touch frantically. And if so, what can I tell him that won’t be bad for discipline? How should I know? I’m too young to be the Old Man!

He gained time with a cigaret. Stars trod forth in view-screens as the gig entered space. Willig exchanged a signal with the ship, set the controls for homing on her, and swiveled around to join in staring at his captain.

Flandry sucked in smoke, trickled it out, and said cautiously: “You have been told often enough, we are first on a fact-finding mission, second at the disposal of Alpha Crucis Command if we can help without prejudice to the primary assignment. Whatever we learn will be duly reported. If any man wishes to file additional material or comment, that’s his privilege. However, you should be warned that it isn’t likely to go far. And this is not because inconvenient facts will be swept under the carpet,” though I daresay that does happen on occasion. “It’s due to the overwhelming volume of data.”

He gestured. “A hundred thousand planets, gentlemen, more or less,” he said. “Each with its millions or billions of inhabitants, its complexities and mysteries, its geographies and civilizations, their pasts and presents and conflicting aims for the future, therefore each with its own complicated, ever-changing, unique set of relationships to the Imperium. We can’t control that, can we? We can’t even hope to comprehend it. At most, we can try to maintain the Pax. At most, gentlemen.